Lack of snow turns Yosemite National Park into a very different place

A visit to Yosemite National Park in December or January typically means closed roads, cross-country skiing and towering snow drifts.

But California's extremely dry weather has created conditions at Yosemite rarely, if ever, seen in the park's 147-year history. Over the past two months, tourists have been hiking in short sleeves. Visitors have flocked to ice skate on alpine lakes normally buried under snow. The Badger Pass ski area has been closed all season. And Tioga Road, California's highest state highway, has remained open later into the winter than any year in recorded history.

"It looks like fall. Only the leaves are missing from the trees," said Kari Cobb, a Yosemite spokeswoman. "There are some places in the high country that have less snow now than during most summers. It's amazing."

Some semblance of normal winter weather, however, may finally be coming.

On Tuesday, the National Weather Service issued a winter weather advisory for the southern Sierra Nevada, including Yosemite and Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park. Forecasters say that three storms will blow through the scenic mountains, bringing snow and gusty winds, starting Thursday and continuing through the weekend.

The first storm will bring accumulations of 4 to 8 inches of snow in the Yosemite high country, which includes the Tioga Road's highest point, 9,943 feet. The second and third storms could produce total accumulations of up to 18 inches.

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The park planned to close Tioga Road at midnight Tuesday. Going back to 1933, when modern records were first kept, the latest the road has stayed open was Jan. 1, in 2000. If the incoming snow melts, the road will reopen, Cobb said. If the snow sticks, the road will remain off limits, likely until May or June.

At this point, parks officials don't know what to expect.

On Tuesday, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada was a mere 11 percent of normal for mid-January. The bone-dry weather has not only hammered Lake Tahoe ski resorts, but also made state water officials who depend on spring runoff nervous -- to say nothing of transforming Yosemite.

Last Sunday, Sunnyvale residents Zak and Lindsey Akin and their dog, Hoosier, woke up at 5 a.m. and drove to the Yosemite high country. They walked out to Tenaya Lake, which sits in a granite-ringed landscape at 8,150 feet elevation off Tioga Road. Some years in January, the road is under 10 feet of snow. That day, the temperature was in the 50s.

"It was like a summer day. I was in jeans and a rugby shirt," said Zak Akin. "It was a little breezy, but it was never cold. I've been there in July and seen more snow. That's what was really unusual about it."

The couple walked out on the frozen lake with their dog, took photos and posted them later to their Facebook page.

"By 1 p.m. it was packed. People had folding chairs and tables out there," Akin said. "They were having picnics. They were playing ice hockey."

In Yosemite Valley, people were riding horses and putting on sunscreen.

The week before, Francesca and Jeffrey Kapper, of San Jose, visited the park with their 2-year-old son, Vincent, and also found people skating on Tenaya Lake.

"I told my husband, 'You are crazy, I'm not going on this ice,' " said Francesca Kapper. "But there were about 10 other people up there walking and skating on the ice. You could tell it was thick. It was too beautiful to pass up."

Cobb, the Yosemite spokeswoman, said that if the park gets very little snow this winter, it could transform Yosemite's summer as well.

Waterfalls could run dry, the risk of forest fires could increase, and hungry black bears could wander more frequently into Yosemite Valley campsites, looking for food to make up for shortfalls in acorns, berries and other natural fare.

The balmy weather and a lack of snow this year in California's highest mountain peaks may be a precursor of the state's future if the climate continues to warm, said Peter Gleick, a water expert and president of the Pacific Institute, an Oakland nonprofit.

Gleick, who has a doctorate in energy and resource studies and won a MacArthur "genius award" in 2003, noted that there is already clear, measurable evidence of climate change -- including melting glaciers, rising sea levels and changing migratory patterns of birds and other species. At current rates of warming, hydrologists at the state Department of Water Resources predict, California could lose 90 percent of its winter snowpack by 2100.

"We can no longer assume that the conditions we've come to expect are going to be the conditions we experience in the future," he said. "We'll still get wet years, and we'll still get dry years, but if it continues to warm, the average will be drier and warmer than in the past."